Rafael Benítez's control over the transfer policy at Liverpool this summer will extend even to negotiating the minutiae of players' wage demands.

Benítez, whose stifling of players' independence includes ordering from the touchline how they must take free-kicks, has been handed the sweeping new powers under the terms of the five-year contract he signed last month.

Although Tom Hicks said the overall budget will be dictated to Benítez by the owners, insiders say transfer talks will be entirely the manager's preserve.

It is a big win for Benítez, who has in the past been frustrated at the pace of negotiations. But while he has the blessing of Hicks and his co-owner, George Gillett, there are concerns within Anfield that his freedom goes too far.

With a pre-season tour to Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand in July, Benítez will have little time in which to haggle fees with other clubs and thrash out terms with the players, and it is likely to lead to more expensive transactions.

After Rick Parry, who has previously conducted transfer business for Liverpool, leaves the club in May, there will be no one at Anfield with the experience to act as Benítez's proxy once he departs on the pre-season tour.

And there is a suspicion that this could lead to one of Benítez's entourage, rather than any club official, talking the transfer turkey.

Keane eye for cashpoint

As a secretive recluse it is lucky that Ipswich Town's owner, Marcus Evans, can keep his head down. The club's new manager, Roy Keane, was delighted with the Drumaville group at Sunderland because "they'd watch the games and get a flight back home to Ireland". Of course it won't hurt that Evans is the UK's 30th-richest football club shareholder. Coincidentally, Keane fled Wearside soon after it became apparent that Paddy Kenny, Drumaville's largest shareholder, had run out of cash.

Cup bid runneth empty

Alistair Darling's increasing autonomy from No10 does not bode well for the England 2018 bid. The chancellor's budget ordered £20m of savings from the department of culture, media and sport, with only £7m already accounted for from the arts. It will be a battle royal between Gordon Brown, who was an even greater supporter of England's bid early on than the Football Association, and No11 as to whether the £5m to stump up the bid can be found. Few in Whitehall expect it to come from the DCMS's shrinking pot.

Athletes face final hurdle

The agents of Britain's leading Olympians will head to UK Sport's London headquarters today to hear the funding body's final proposals on the athletes' deed that will underpin the £50m Team 2012 sponsorship programme. Both sides hope the meeting will produce an agreed document for the athletes to sign before next Thursday's deadline despite the Olympians' enduring concerns over image-rights issues. But so rocky has the road previously been — some governing bodies were threatening to withdraw their athletes' lottery funding unless they sign up – there will have to be conciliatory noises from UK Sport and its partner in the process, the British Olympic Association.

No hampers for Fifa

Never anything less than colourful, Mohamed Al Fayed yesterday sent his press agent, Michael Cole, to deliver a speech to the Premier League chairmen's meeting, reprising Fayed's theme on the incompetence of football administrators at home and abroad. Fayed, apparently, will never employ Sepp Blatter or Michel Platini as Harrod's doormen, a revelation that will no doubt come as a bitter disappointment to them. Moreover, clubs are "philanthropists" for the "charity called Sky". Sky, for the record, has agreed to pay £1.623bn for the rights to three years' Premier League football.